Monday, January 18, 2010

Welcome to Citizen Inspired! Angela and I are thrilled to provide a creative forum for people around the world who are passionate about human rights, environmental sustainability, and global progress.

We decided to launch our blog on Martin Luther King Day because we believe in Dr. King’s peaceful and incredibly courageous fight for justice. The spirit of the civil rights movement doesn’t lie dormant in history. It’s today. It’s the here and now. It is, in a word, imperative.

That being said, I couldn’t think of a better inaugural post than one about the new bookHalf The Sky, by New York Times reporter Nicholas Kristof and his colleague (and wife) Sheryl WuDunn. Both Pulitzer Prize-winning international journalists, they met in China while covering Tiananmen Square, and have since spent most of their careers traveling around the globe, reporting from some of the world’s most vulnerable regions.

Over the years, they’ve met dozens of women and girls who have suffered – and continue to suffer -- unimaginable abuse because of cultural and political systems that deny women basic human rights. Bearing witness to stunningly brave real-life characters, the book is an unsentimental yet passionate call-to-arms; its theme -- that the fight for women must be treated with the same urgency and persistence as the fight to abolish slavery. And when you read the stories in Half The Sky, you’ll agree.

The irony here is that although women in the international development community have been fighting these systems for over twenty years, it took a celebrity journalist – who also happens to be a white guy from Oregon – to put it on the mainstream radar.But at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter who got people to listen; it just matters that they are.

The bottom line is this:when women can’t get access to health care or education; when they die unnecessarily during childbirth or from preventable diseases; when they are not afforded the same economic opportunities as men; when they are sold into slavery, entire nations suffer. The world suffers. Dr. Martin Luther King understood this fundamental truth.

Purpose

How is art, design, and an evolving communications and media landscape making a positive impact in the world? Citizen Inspired documents imaginative efforts that lead to real sustainable solutions, and serves as a resource and meeting place for artists, designers, entrepreneurs, activists and global citizens. A place where connections are forged and solutions flourish. Please contact us with your contributions and tips.

Editors

Angela Adrar

Email - Twitter - Full Biois an international strategy and communications consultant based in Washington, D.C. who specializes in social/environmental project and business planning, often combining traditional marketing with social media for global impact.

Rachel Clift

Email - Twitter - Full Biois an Emmy-Nominated producer, writer, documentary filmmaker, and communications consultant based in Brooklyn, NY. She has filmed projects in Europe, Asia, and Latin America and has a passion for development.